Debbie Smith from Carve Consulting presents insights from the recent research on social recruiting strategies. It explores ownership of social recruiting strategies and budgest within organisations, where investment decisions are made and how ROI is measured
2. Emma Mirrington, The FIRM
“It is encouraging to see that most organisations have now
adopted the use of social recruiting yet interestingly it is only a
minority that have a pro-active social recruiting or candidate CRM
strategy in place. There appears to be a tendency for
organisations to be tactical rather than strategic in their
approach. It will be interesting to see how this changes over the
coming years.”
3. Together,we have the
courage & conviction
to challenge
ourselvesand
business
.
We
us
e
technology
to make
businessmore ; to
inspire and be
inspired.
3
human
transform
Our mission
6. The Sample 79% respondents based in the UK
87% respondents in the private sector
60%
25%
15%
UK-based employees in current company
Under 1,000
1,000 to 10,000
More than 10,000
12%
30%
18%
8%
32%
Primary job function
Recruiter (in-house)
Talent / Resourcing manager (in-
house)
Employer brand specialist
Recruiter (agency)
Other (please specify)
9. The Index
Strategy:
• Has a social recruiting strategy in place
• Has a social content marketing strategy in place
• Has a candidate CRM strategy in place
10. The Index
Investment:
• Has budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
• Measures return on investment of all social recruiting efforts
• Provides social media training to
• Employees
• in-house recruiters
• hiring managers
• leaders
11. The Index
People:
• Has leaders and hiring managers acting as ‘talent magnets’
• Empowers all of its employees to advocate the talent brand on
social platforms
15. Strategy
52%
39%
9%
Does your organisation have a social recruiting strategy in place?
Yes
No
I don't
know
Despite high platform adoption rates,
advanced social recruiting strategies remain
the exception, not the rule
39% of organisations don’t have a social recruiting
strategy in place
Most don’t encourage senior executives (60%) or
employees (55%) to become advocates.
60% don’t have a candidate CRM strategy
16. Strategy
Social recruiting ownership
remains an issue
In organisations that do have a
social recruiting strategy, strategy is
owned by the talent acquisition or
resourcing team in 50% of cases.
Strategies are frequently owned by a
team with different strategic priorities
16%
51%
10%
2%
21%
Who in your organisation owns the social recruiting strategy?
HR
Talent Acquisition / Resourcing
Marketing
Corporate Affairs / Corporate
Communications
No single function owns the strategy
17. Strategy
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
has a content strategy in
place for social recruiting
actively encourages
employees to engage on
social networks for
recruitment purposes
ensures our senior
executives lead by
example and use social
platforms to advocate our
talent brand
empowers our employees
to advocate our talent
brand on social platforms
has a candidate CRM
strategy / system in place
needs to invest more in
social recruiting
My company...
19. Investment
Levels of investment will increase
but tracking ROI is limited
56% don’t have a budget allocated
specifically for social recruiting
46% do not track ROI for social recruiting
70% expect an increase in investment in
the coming year
35%
56%
9%
Is there a budget allocated specifically for social
recruiting?
Yes No I don't know
21. People
There is still a significant social
media skills gap
55% of in-house recruiters receive
social media training, the majority of
employees, including hiring managers
and leadership teams, don’t
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Your in-house recruiters Hiring managers Leadership teams All employees
Do you provide social media training for:
Yes
22. Platforms – organisational use
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Google+ YouTube Instagram Snapchat Whatsapp Pinterest Glassdoor Tumblr Viadeo Xing
Which of the following social platforms does your organisation use...
For Recruitment For Employer branding
25. Strategic buy-in is an issue
Generating buy-in
“lack of understanding from senior management” / “convincing senior
management” / “lack of awareness and education” / “buy-in from
certain managers” / “seeing a viable ROI” / “Time and engagement
from senior leaders” / “need for change management” / “Convincing
everyone that this should be invested in and a priority for the
business” / “skepticism from execs on effectiveness to attract the
right level of people”…
Getting budget
“so many options, not enough budget” / “limited budget” / “securing
investment” / “financial resources” / “budget availability” / “Budget”
(x7)…
The two most recurring
challenges faced by
organisations in social
recruiting are intrinsically
linked:
a lack of of buy-in at senior
management level means
organisations are unable to
unlock the budget and
resources necessary to
deploy successful social
recruiting strategies
Emma Mirrington, Director of The FIRM, said “Social Media for recruitment has been identified by our members as an area where they lack confidence and capability. We are therefore delighted to partner with Carve Consulting on this research and we are greatly looking forward to the results.”
About Carve – working with EY, Manpower Group, RB, global fmcg, Vodafone
So organisations, large and small across varied sectors
We are a social business consultancy we specialise social and digital transformation
which essentially means we advise our clients on the use of social and digital technologies to drive business outcomes.
Most organisations have some form of digital transformation agenda and we advise on the right technology but more importantly the behavrious and change required around the use of that tech.
We work with in house recruiters, business leaders, recruitment consultancies. Corporate comms, marketing.
The focus all too often is on which platforms to use.
Should I be using snapchat?
How can Instagram help me find candidates?
Which communties do developers use?
But in our experince few are really unlocking the potential that social and digital platorms offer to directly drive positive business outcomes.
The story is all too familiar……
Broadcast messaging
But in today’s networked economy - every consumer is a digital consumer and every business is a digital business to some extent
From taxi-driving to dating, from training to trading
And recruitment has not been untouched by this digital transformation.
Indeed, driven by the consumer-candidate, the HR / Talent function has been at the vanguard of organisational adoption of social business tools.
Our research for the first time examines the global state of social recruiting.
But in this research we are looking further than the use of social platforms by exploring who owns the social recruiting strategy and budget within organisations, where investment decisions are made and how ROI is measured.
Organisational strategy:
Use platforms
ownership of strategy
elements of strategy
level of invesment
ROI
Personal uses of networks, challenges and confidence
The survey was:
launched in November 2015
distributed to members of the FIRM and shared with a range of other talent, resourcing and employer branding professionals
Promoted to targeted audiences on social media - agency recruiters, in house talent specialists/ resourcers and employer branding specialists
social platforms are now a core part of any recruiter’s toolkit.
The online survey took just a few minutes to complete and was incentivised with a prize draw to win an Apple Watch
exclusively released here today – copy of key insights in Recruiter magazine…..
178
Talent/ Resourcing manager (in-house) – 31%
Recruiter (in-house) – 11%
Recruiter (agency) – 8%
Employer brand specialist – 18%
Other – 31%
Other includes related roles such as:
Generalist HRD with recruitment in my remit
Global Talent Acquisition
head of HR
Head of HR with responsibility across HR functions
HR and Recruitment
HR generalist with responsibility for recruitment
HR Manager
In house recruitment
In house talent lead
Marketing for recruitment
project based resourcing specialist
Recruiter tactical
Recruiting strategy leader
Recruitment marketing - social media, advertising, SEO
other digital marketing
management of careers site
Recruitment solutions research
RPO
Talent attraction specialist for RPO
Size of organisation
over 50,000 4.6%
10,000 to 50,000 10.3%
1,000 to 10,000 25.9%
100 to 1,000 28.7%
under 100 30.0%
don’t know 0.5%
Sector
Public 13.2%
Private 86.8%
12 key identifiers of best practice, 1000 is the highest possible rank.
An organisation achieving this score would meet the following criteria:
social recruiting strategy in place
social content marketing strategy in place
candidate CRM strategy in place
budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
Provide social media training to all employees including in-house recruiters, hiring managers and leaders
Have leaders and hiring managers acting as ‘talent magnets’
Empower all of its employees to advocate the talent brand on social platforms
Measure return on investment of all social recruiting efforts
WE HAVE SPLIT THESE INTO 3 AREAS….
8 key identifiers of best practice, 1000 is the highest possible rank.
An organisation achieving this score would meet the following criteria:
social recruiting strategy in place
social content marketing strategy in place
candidate CRM strategy in place
budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
Provide social media training to all employees including in-house recruiters, hiring managers and leaders
Have leaders and hiring managers acting as ‘talent magnets’
Empower all of its employees to advocate the talent brand on social platforms
Measure return on investment of all social recruiting efforts
8 key identifiers of best practice, 1000 is the highest possible rank.
An organisation achieving this score would meet the following criteria:
social recruiting strategy in place
social content marketing strategy in place
candidate CRM strategy in place
budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
Provide social media training to all employees including in-house recruiters, hiring managers and leaders
Have leaders and hiring managers acting as ‘talent magnets’
Empower all of its employees to advocate the talent brand on social platforms
Measure return on investment of all social recruiting efforts
8 key identifiers of best practice, 1000 is the highest possible rank.
An organisation achieving this score would meet the following criteria:
Have a social recruiting strategy in place
Have a social content marketing strategy in place
Have a candidate CRM strategy in place
Have budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
Provide social media training to all employees including in-house recruiters, hiring managers and leaders
Have leaders and hiring managers acting as ‘talent magnets’
Empower all of its employees to advocate the talent brand on social platforms
Measure return on investment of all social recruiting efforts
SO WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MAGIC NUMBER. WHERE ON THE SCALE DO YOU THINK ORGANISATIONS ARE?
The 2016 rank is 471 out of a possible 1000.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
This industry-wide figure reflects the wide adoption of social recruiting, but the relative immaturity of most initiatives.
For example, whilst a large majority use LinkedIn for talent attraction, many don’t have a coherent social recruiting strategy in place that addresses employer branding building, CRM or advocacy.
We can provide an organisational index rank and benchmark to your organisation – if you’d like us to do that then let me know at the end of the session and we’ll be in touch.
This can then be used by you to see how you measure up against the market, and highlight individual opportunities to improve recruitment and talent brand performance.
UNFORTUNATLEY
The 2016 rank is 471 out of a possible 1000.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
This industry-wide figure reflects the wide adoption of social recruiting, but the relative immaturity of most initiatives.
For example, whilst a large majority use LinkedIn for talent attraction, many don’t have a coherent social recruiting strategy in place that addresses employer branding building, CRM or advocacy.
We can provide an organisational index rank and benchmark to your organisation – if you’d like us to do that then let me know at the end of the session and we’ll be in touch.
This can then be used by you to see how you measure up against the market, and highlight individual opportunities to improve recruitment and talent brand performance.
UNFORTUNATLEY
You’ll be delighted to hear that I’m not going to go through each and every question and present the results to you in numerous graphs …
If you’d like a copy of the full report, let me know and we’ll send you a copy next week.
But I am going to run through the insights we have gathered from the results and take you through the key takeaways
And more importantly our recommendations for best practice social recruiting…..
THE FIRST AREA IS STRATEGY
HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD SAY YOUR ORGANISATION HAS A SOCIAL RECRUITING STRATEGY IN PLACE?
AND WHO OWNS THAT STRATEGY?
Strategy is what enables organisations to transform tactical initiatives into drivers of organisational impact.
One of the striking observations from this first CSRI report is that only half of respondents described their organisation as having a Social Recruiting strategy in place.
This in many ways help us understand why so much Social Recruiting is limited to tactical, localised impact. And why actionable strategy is a defining characteristic of those organisations who create the biggest impact through their social recruiting efforts.
52% of organisations have a social recruiting strategy in place
But influencing social recruiting strategy for senior leaders is less common with only 57% having a working group in place to influence this
only 40% have a CRM strategy/system in place
In 51% of organisations Talent Acquisition or Resourcing own the social recruiting strategy
In 76% or organisations there is a working group in place to influence social media guidelines
But influencing social recruiting strategy for senior leaders is less common with only 57% having a working group in place to influence this
When we look at what the strategy entailed we see…
whilst a majority of organisations (58%) actively encourage employees to engage on social networks for recruitment purposes,
less than half have either a content, leadership, advocacy, or candidate CRM strategy in place.
only 40% have a CRM strategy/system in place
SO WE’VE SEEN WHAT STRATEGIES COVER BUT HOW ARE THESE EFFORTS MEASURED?
As we’ve seen, Social Recruiting is tactically delivering business benefit, but organisational impact is limited because of a lack of high-level strategy adoption. Mirroring this current low maturity level is the lack of associated budget and measurement: only a third of respondents report a dedicated social recruiting budget, and less than half track the ROI on there efforts in terms of impact on time and cost per hire.
The authors’ expectation is that, following the adoption curve of other digitally-led business transformations (such as CRM and e-commerce), in the coming 12 months we will see the elevation of Social Recruiting from the fringes of the organisation (tactical, localised, isolated use) to the heart (strategic, systematised, widespread use). This is reflected by 70% expecting a budget increase in the coming year.
With only 35% of respondents having a budget allocated specifically for social recruiting
70% anticipate investment in social recruiting increasing in the next year
46% do not track ROI for social recruiting
WHAT ABOUT INTERNAL CAPABILITY – WHO IN THE ORGANISAITON SUPPORTS YOUR SOC REC EFFORTS?
We track how investment in social recruiting influences:
Cost per hire
recruitment agency – 55%
in house recruiter – 47%
in-house talent/recruitment manager -47%
time to hire
recruitment agency – 18%
in house recruiter – 0%
in-house talent/resourcing manager – 11%
NEXT WE LOOKED INTO WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SOCIAL RECRUITING
Training is fundamental to driving wide-spread adoption, capacity building and therefore value creation. No matter how talented, one recruiter can only make a limited impact. Yet an organisation that places digital talent engagement at it’s core empowers every single employee as a potential social recruiter.
Thinking in terms of organisational maturity, most organisations still exhibit relatively low levels of capability.
Even today, with LinkedIn at the heart of the vast majority of direct sourcing programmes, still more than 40% of in-house recruiters don’t receive social media training. That figure soars to nearly 60% for hiring managers and leadership teams, and 70% for all employees. This represents the missed opportunity of peer recruiting and employer advocacy, two critical drivers of business value.
43% in-house recruiters do not receive social media training
70% of organisations do not provide social media training for all employees
only 42% provide social media training for leadership teams
Organisations provide social media training for:
In house recruiters – 57%
Hiring managers – 41%
Leadership teams – 42%
All employees – 29%
NEXT WE ASKED ABOUT HOW VARIOUS CHANNELS ARE BEING USED……
Alongside, purpose (objectives, strategy), people (training) and processes (tactics, tools) a key consideration for organisations is which platforms to use.
The CSRI survey looks in depth at this area, asking respondents to describe their use of these platforms for recruitment, for employer brand building, and in other ways (for example, social selling, marketing and so on.)
There are some unsurprising results here: nine out of ten respondents use LinkedIn for recruitment, and nearly three quarters use LinkedIn to support employer branding objectives.
What is surprising however is the relatively low levels of take-up of other platforms outside of LinkedIn.
AND A FINAL INSIGHT WAS ABOUT SENIOR LEVEL BUYIN…
Don’t get fooled by the fact that virtually every recruiter is on LinkedIn , or that most organisations have a career-dedicated Twitter account :
social recruiting is still in its infancy.
Most organisations don’t have a budget allocated to social recruiting and
40% don’t have any form of strategy in place.
Why? Because a lot of organisations fail to generate buy-in at senior level.
So what does all this mean – what insights have we gained from the research?
In conclusion, social recruiting is currently at a low maturity level within most organisations. But the scale of the opportunity - from employer branding and CRM to talent pooling and advocacy – is significant.
Whilst social has transformed direct sourcing…..
Our research demonstrates how LinkedIn has radically changed the way the world recruits.
Fully 90% of organisations use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
But if the business case has been made for using social to identify and headhunt candidates
the impact of social on the wider talent business eco-system is currently limited.
Half of the organisations surveyed don’t have a social recruiting strategy in place.
The second take-away from the research therefore is that social recruiting today is tactical, not strategic. Initiatives tend to be localised and isolated. This means that only a fraction of organisations are realising the full potential of social recruiting in areas such as employer branding, CRM, and employee advocacy.
To move beyond tactical, isolated impact, talent leaders should think in terms of the 5Ps.
(Image = Carve Purpose, People, Process etc)
In the majority of reporting organisations, social recruiting is limited in two dimensions:
impact areas
maturity
In terms of impact areas, whilst most organisations are realising significant value from attraction (typically through corporate LinkedIn licences), few are creating or measuring value in other areas such as advocacy and employer reputation building.
In regard to maturity, little activity goes beyond corporate social broadcasting (pushing jobs and employer brand messages) and limited training (typically restricted to recruiters.)
The third learning from the research is of the acknowledged need to build capacity.
There is a recognition from leading employers that social recruiting has the potential to enhance end-to-end recruitment outcomes in the ways outlined above. But to achieve these gains and efficiencies, investment is needed.
90% of respondents recognise the need for further investment.
Individually, many talent leaders recognise the importance of senior management sponsorship.
Beyond budget and buy-in, the research highlights the need for social media training and empowerment throughout the enterprise.
With only 29% providing social recruiting training for all employees
And finally, the results demonstrate the need for talent and recruitment stakeholders to begin personally using the consumer social tools of today that will become the de-facto recruitment tools of tomorrow.
So what can YOU do to influence the social recruiting strategy in your organisaiton?
According to respondents, there is vast room for improvement in multiple areas:
Making sure that the strategy’s objectives are clear and therefore measurable in order to build solid business cases
Giving ownership (and budget) to a multi-disciplinary team composed of recruiters, HR leaders and employer brand specialists.
Training not only recruiters but empower all employees, with a focus on senior leaders, to become employer brand ambassadors
Diversifying the employer branding strategy, to reach talent audiences at different stages of the candidate journey (Glassdoor, Instagram…)
Using social to enhance and automate managing candidate relationships, reducing administration, cost and time per hire.
Yet the survey found that 60% of respondents don’t have a CRM strategy in place.
Leveraging employees’ social networks to promote employer brand and specific vacancies, improving quality of hire, reducing time and attraction costs. Yet less than half of organisations empower senior executives (40%) or employees (45%) as advocates.
Even LinkedIn isn’t all about recruitment
They see a much wider ecosystem
Social recruiting strategies cannot be delivered in isolation by recruiters
demonstrate the need for talent and recruitment stakeholders to begin personally using the consumer social tools of today that will become the de-facto recruitment tools of tomorrow.
If you don’t understand them you can’t build a business case to use them
If you don’t use them, you are missing out on huge pools of candidates and significant brand reach
Don’t limit your employer branding strategy to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter but try out different networks,
Glassdoor and Instagram really should be part of your strategy …… certainly if you are to stand out and reach talent at different stages of the candidate journey.
Building digital talent brands, reducing marketing, attraction and retention costs. But less than a quarter of organisations studied are using Glassdoor for employer branding purposes (22%) and less than 5% are presenting their employer brand on Instagram.
I have no doubt you are identifying and engaging with potential candidates
But what is in place to:
keep those candidates warm
ensure they have a positive experience of your brand
Keep you front of mind when considering a career /job change
There are lots of tools available to help eg. Avature
But you can keep it simple – create a content framework to ensure you send regular, relevant, targeted messages =, even if it’s just to your LI connections.
Engaging only when you have a role to discuss diminishes your efforts
Using social to talent pool candidates, reducing attraction costs and time per hire.
Time to hire
Cost per hire
Quality of hire – a bit more complex but possible
40% are tracking the impact of social recruiting on cost per hire and even fewer (14%) time to hire.
Jonny has a summary of the key results from the survey for you.
If you’d like a copy of the full report or to discuss benchmarking your organsation using the index then let me or Jonny know…
Thank you.
D